AMBASSADOR MAGAZINE

With its strident motto "Export or Die!" The Ambassador magazine Promoting Post-War British Textiles and Fashion has been described as "probably the most daring and enterprising trade magazine ever conceived" and this luxurious volume published by the V&A Museum shows us how accurate an epithet this was. With its innovative design and swashbuckling editorial approach driven by the vision of its founder, Hans Juda, and his wife Elsbeth, who was the brains behind its striking photography, its aim was to promote British fashion, textiles and design in a full-on, pulling-no-punches manner, focussing on the strengths of British industry with no lights hidden under any bushels. From March 1946 to August 1972 the Judas used their plentiful connections to the fashion and artistic worlds to set up ambitious photoshoots to highlight innovations in textiles and showcase the latest couture fashions, and the magazine featured many works from luminaries such as John Piper and Graham Sutherland who produced art especially for it. The Judas sold the magazine to the multinational publisher Thomson in 1961 who, as well as being less interested in cultural nuance and creative vision than their predecessors, also inherited a shift in economics and politics that saw most of the world's textile manufacturing shift to the Far East and, albeit gradually, The Ambassador's raison d'être faded. With hundreds of illus in colour and b/w taken from the magazine's archive, here are some of the most striking and iconic photos, designs, artworks, advertisements and people, together with contributary essays from seven experts from the V&A's art, fashion, design and photography departments. The photoshoots are quite superb, but some of the more ephemeral items are equally fascinating, such as Lacrinoid "opalite" buttons - " for every garment... retain their brilliance in spite of sun, rain and extremes of heat and cold" - marvellous! 240 opulent 9¼"×12½" pages.